


hearts stained with engine oil

by philthestone



Series: nursery 'verse [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Gen, father-daughter smooshiness also, first time crushes are hard man trust me, like the FLUFFIEST FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3956344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Woah,” says Han. “Woah, woah. Back up there, you’re losin’ me. This about Traest?”</p><p>If he didn’t already have a niggling suspicion, her look of utter betrayal and the shocked flush of her cheeks is a dead giveaway.</p><p>“Who told you?” she demands, and this time he does chuckle.</p><p>“No one, Jaya. Your old man has mystical powers.”</p><p>(And in <em>this </em>family, that’s saying something.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hearts stained with engine oil

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless fluff I wrote a while ago when I was missing my dad a lot. Honestly I have no idea if there's actually a moral or a conclusion to the ideas in this fic and it's just me crying softly on the inside because Han would be such a great dad and also I still miss my own dad and anyway in conclusion bye
> 
> reviews are ... uh ... really, really good oranges.

Jaina hasn’t said a word since they sat down in the cockpit.

It’s not that he prides himself on being the sort of parent his kids tell everything to. Well, he _does_ , but it’s never an expectation. And certainly, the word “secrecy” is something that inherently, inevitably accompanies the phenomenon of twins, his experience with two sets of them more than enough to educate him on the subject.

But Jaya – stubborn, beautiful Jaini-girl with her braids half-undone and her quick-coming grin and the nimble movements of her fingers, taptap against the arm of the pilot’s chair in an arrhythmic pattern, greenbrown eyes flashing like starflares and her lips decidedly crooked –

Jaina is _his_ in a way he’d never thought any being could ever be.

And, most of the time, secret or not, he’ll know before most anyone who isn’t Jacen.

They’re out of the atmosphere and two seconds away from hyperspace by the time she uncrosses her arms. The oversized sleeves of her oil-stained spacer’s jacket ( _not one of his_ , which means he hasn’t got a damn clue where she managed to dig it up) are rolled up to the elbows, and she’s been picking mercilessly at the already-chipped yellow paint on her fingernails all morning. Twenty standard hours from Yavin IV to the pit-stop at Barka and he can almost see the gears turning in her head, wondering if she can pull off complete silence for the whole trip and _will Dad be mad at me ‘cause he asked me to come with him and I’m being useless?_

(She would, specifically, use the word “useless” in her head – the twins’ tendency for the exaggerated and dramatic will never cease to amuse him, even if he lives to witness it lifetimes over, and Jaina has always seen anything that isn’t _completely engaged_ as “useless”.)

(Is it hereditary, Han wonders – the ingrained tendency to personally demand nothing but the very utmost?)

He has to hide his smile when she turns, suddenly and abruptly, and opens her mouth.

“I didn’t –”

“You’ve got every right to stew in your own misery for a bit, Jay. I’m not takin’ it personal.”

“Right,” she says, and then frowns, sharp and defensive. “I’m not miserable!”

He leans back in the captain’s chair. “Uh huh.”

“I’m _not,_ ” she insists. “I’m _pissed off._ ”

“Ah,” says Han. “You’re right. That’s different.”

She frowns at him, trying to figure out if he’s teasing or not.

( _Well, maybe a little.)_

“It’s just – _stupid_ people,” she says finally, voice dropping down to a mumble halfway through the sentence and going back to picking at her nails. At twelve, Jaina is more outspoken and comfortable in her own skin than either of her brothers, first to dive her hands into any endeavor they undertake. And she’s always there, always been there from when they were tiny things that could almost fit in his palm, the one stepping up first and taking charge and making sure her siblings were Okay, Alright, Put Together.

Han thinks that there are times where they overestimate her.

Well. Perhaps _they_ is a collective that excludes Jasa, honoured keeper of his sister’s brightbright soul, somehow able to understand her before she understands herself.

(Which would explain, Han thinks, why he’d not complained for a second when Han recruited Jaya and Jaya only for the trip – gave him a significant look, actually, as though he knew exactly what Dad was doing and Wholly Approved.) 

(Han smiles to himself; of course he did.) 

But then, this is so often the same shortcoming people have with Leia, taking her for all that she presents herself as and never thinking _there is more_ – and he wants to kick himself whenever he slips up and forgets because yes, he’s human and he sure as hell ain’t anywhere _close_ to infallible, especially when it comes to his kids – but he’s had _experience_ with this, damn it. And where Jacen’s heart is always overextending, always two steps ahead and stumbling back to regain its overeager footing, Han knows, Jaina’s is already fully steeped in everything she does, burning enthusiasm and cleverness and alltoovulnerable. The word _sensitive_ has long since been discarded in favor of _learning_ and _exploring_ , always testing the waters and trying to see if she can make it one step further. She is buffered by her consummate stubbornness and the thrill of her latest scrapes and having a twin brother - but she’s still a kid _(his kid)_ and Han thinks vaguely that he’s likely never really going to stop seeing her as such.

He taps his finger against the arm of the chair.

“At the Temple?”

“No? I mean yes. Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t like. You’d think – Dad, can we just –”

“Not talk about it?”

“No, that’s not what I meant!” Confused and protesting and upset all at once – and, well, everyone says that she looks a lot like him, but her expression right there is _all_ her mother. “I’m just … I –”

(And his gentle teasing slips away entirely, because her jaw tenses in that way it does when she’s definitely about to cry but _doesn’t_ want to cry – “crying is _gross_ ,” she’d once told him despairingly, angrily scrubbing at her seven-year-old cheeks and wincing as One Two-Bee set her broken arm; “I _hate_ it, Daddy” – and she stops talking immediately. Opening her mouth would be outright betrayal, at this point.)

“Hey,” he says, leaning forward. He can feel his eyebrows dipping down on his forehead of their own accord. “What’s wrong, Jaini-girl?”

“’S stupid,” she finally allows, the momentary struggle abandoned, and her face crumples in on itself. “I – it’s not _fair_. Everyone knew before me and I felt like such an idiot, Dad, why does he just – Bast just _had_ to go and open her big stupid mouth and half the Temple knew –” a gasping breath, and her hands are curled into protesting fists, frustration and embarrassment injecting a glow in her cheeks. “And he goes and _laughs_ at me! That’s not – it’s none of their business and if I’d known he knew – you know, Tenel Ka almost warned me but then Master Tionne came and – and I just had to go and yell when he laughed –”

“Woah,” says Han. “Woah, woah. Back up there, you’re losin’ me. This about Traest?”

If he didn’t already have a niggling suspicion, her look of utter betrayal and the shocked flush of her cheeks is a dead giveaway.

“Who told you?” she demands, and this time he does chuckle.

“No one, Jaya. Your old man has mystical powers.”

(And in _this_ family, that’s saying something.)

She glares, if only momentarily, and then her face falls, shoulders slumping back into the seat. The red on her cheeks has turned splotchy, a muddled blend of blush and tear stains.

“Everyone at the Temple knew that he knew. Except me, and I felt so – so –” Her face crumples again, and she presses her small hands against her eyes in frustration. “Why’s this so hard?” comes out in a half-whisper, her voice cracking with defiant frustration mid-sentence and Han reaches out squeezes her knee.

“Jaya, look at me.”

“He must think I’m a complete idiot, Dad.”

“Because you didn’t know that he knew, or ‘cause he found out from someone who wasn’t you?”

“Because everyone was laughing behind my _back_ ,” half-sobbed into her fingers, and Han deliberately schools his face from its sudden, involuntary, out-and-out scowl to somewhere close to neutral before she looks back up.

Having a first-time crush – a serious one – is one thing. But humiliation, no matter what the circumstance, is a different beast altogether.

(And there is a part of him – the part that isn’t routinely telling Leia that there are some things that kids have to learn through experience, and scraped knees and bumped elbows – that wants to blast anyone who’d dare set beasts like that on his babies to space dust in hell.)

(He wonders if this unwavering need to keep them safe, visceral and ingrained in a way that he has never felt anything before, will ever really lessen.)

So he doesn’t say anything and opens his arms, wide and inviting, and she crawls over the arm of the copilot’s seat to curl up against his shoulder and hide from the galaxy for a few minutes. She’s grown ( _growing),_ faster than he would have ever anticipated, and only last year her legs would have been short enough to tuck over his. Now, her knee digs into his calf and her other foot is pressed awkwardly against the chair’s other arm and the crown of her head is almost uncomfortable where it presses against his chin.

Han tightens his hold and squeezes her shoulder and makes no move to shift when the circulation in his legs cuts off completely.

“’M sorry, Dad,” she finally mumbles into his shirt, and he lets her pull away so that he can give Good Life Advice. Which, all things considered ...

“Listen to me, Jaya. There’s nothing wrong with getting a little flustered over someone every so often. Alright?”

“But it’s so –”

“Rotten. I know, it can be rotten.”

“He wasn’t s’posed to laugh,” she mutters, fiddling with a stray thread on her sleeve. “I mean – I wasn’t gonna – gonna tell him,” (and here she flushes again, pink going all the way up to her ears, same way his does, and ducks her head) “but it’s just – if I ever – oh, _kriff_.”

He supposes he really ought to say something, but settles for simply raising an eyebrow in silence. Jaina has the good grace to look sheepish.

“Sorry.”

“Just not in front of Mom,” he says, grinning slightly; she rolls her big eyes, and one of the braids in her hair slips undone from its ponytail. Then, seriously: “And remember, sport. Not everyone’s worth getting flustered over. You gotta pick out the good ones.”

“You say that like’s it’s so easy, Dad,” she grumbles, letting her head fall back against his chest, and he laughs.

“I never actually said it was easy.”

“You imp _lied_.”

“Don’t worry, Jay,” he tells her. “You got years and years left to perfect the art.”

“When did _you_ figure it out?”

“Someone half my size told me to jump down a garbage chute.”

“Da-ad.”

“What? I’m serious!”

( _He is.)_

“You’re worse than Mom. When I ask her about these things, she starts talking about giant space slugs.”

“So you _ask_ her about these things, huh?”

She makes a face, wriggles a bit as he leans over to adjust their course on the navicomputer.

“Maybe. A couple times. About kissing.”

Han frowns. “No kissing ‘til you’re fifteen.”

“What? That’s no fair!” She is leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest again. He wants to laugh, wants to throw back his head and laugh until he’s got wet in his eyes because she’s just spent the past twenty minutes telling him how rotten these things are and now she’s _protesting_.

Gods help him.

“Well, alright. You want it to be twenty-five, I can arrange that –”

“Dad!”

“I mean we might be able to negotiate it down to _eighteen_ –”

She groans, loud and dramatic, and he pokes her in the side where he knows she’s the most ticklish. She yelps and slides out of the chair. “I am allowed _some_ rules,” Han tells her, eyebrow raised, and Jaina makes a face at him before flopping back down into the copilot’s chair. The yellowblue streaks of hyperspace outside of the viewscreen bring out the green ( _his green)_ in her mostly-brown eyes, and her face is slowly morphing back into disconsolate.

“Don’t think about it,” Han advises, tapping the console. “If you keep running it over in your head it’ll just get worse.”

“He has a nice smile,” she blurts, confesses, cheeks flushing scarlet again and voice wavering. “But he just laughed along with the rest of ‘em when they –” She groans, knocking the back of her head against the seat back. “Blaster bolts, I still feel stupid.”

He makes a sound at the back of his throat, reaches up his hand to rub at his chin on impulse. It’s rough, scraping against the pads of his fingers, which reminds him that he needs to shave and he’s needed to shave for the past two days but gods if he can actually find the time.

(He’s not surprised to find that he doesn’t care at all anymore.)

“Look, Jaya. Think of it this way. D’you think you’ve done something wrong?”

She looks up at him, chapped lips parting. She bites down on one of them. “Ummmm. No?”

“Why not?” Watching as she brings her knee up to her chin.

“Dad –”

“C’mon, kiddo, answer the question.”

Jaina props her chin on her knee and makes a face.

“I dunno. You said it was normal.”

“And?”

“And – I mean. I guess I’m not hurting anyone, or anything.”

“Right,” says Han, smiling encouragingly. “Liking someone isn’t doing ‘em any sorta harm unless they let it or you let it, which, in this case –”

“They haven’t. And I haven’t. But it’s still –”

“But kids can be immature,” says Han gently. “And you can be immature –”

“Hey!”

He grins properly this time, reaches out and flicks her knee. “Trust me. When I was your age, I was the worst. Twice as bad as anything you and Jace are.”

“Oh, really,” she says, crossing her arms and lifting her chin, and Han shrugs.

“Comes with the gig,” he says ( _and thanks the Force that none of them will ever have to live like he did)_. “You’re only twelve, baby girl. Everyone has immature days. Maturity comes with time and experience and effort, Jaya. Being immature isn’t exactly bad. You’ve just gotta know that you’ll move forward, one day.”

She ducks her head, worries at her lip again. “I know, Dad. I just …”

“Go back to what we were saying. Immaturity can lead to people doing stupid things.”

(He would wonder at what point he became the One who doled out serious life advice, but he gave up trying to figure that one out somewhere between unconsciously adopting a tow-headed farmboy, and marrying a princess and having three children.)

“Like – laughing. At me.”

“Exactly.” He splays his hands on his thighs as she drags up her other leg to match the first one, face pinching into her knees.

“It’s still rotten.”

“Sure,” says Han. “And I promise I’m not saying that you’re wrong in hurting. I’d hurt too. Your Mom’d hurt too, and Luke, and probably Mara, when she was your age. But like you said – you didn’t do anything wrong. And you know you didn’t, so you can hold onto that. If you know you’re in the right, it’s easier to forget the nasty things others’ll say about you, or think about you.”

“Is that what you do?”

Han feels his grin turn crooked. “Nah. I’m hardly ever in the right.”

“Da- _ad_.” Her nose is scrunched at him, a reluctant grin spreading across her face. She lifts an eyebrow in an eerily Leia-like fashion and huffs. “You can’t give advice you don’t follow.”

“Sure I can,” he says. “I just did. Besides, your mother’ll agree with me.”

“That if I’m doing what I know is right, it’ll be easier to tell everyone else to space ‘emselves?”

“Ah,” he says. “Well. Maybe not in so many words.” But she’s grinning at him from between her knees, big eyes taken on some of their usual sparkle, and he laughs and shakes his head at her. “C’mere, you little rascal.”

She sidles out of her oversized chair and perches on the edge of his, feet propped awkwardly by his legs, elbows digging into the corner of the chair’s back.

“Can I help bring us out of hyperspace, Dad?” One of her sleeves has slid down swallowed her hand, nothing more than the chipped tips of her yellow-painted nails peeping through, reaching out to steady herself against his shoulder. He raises an eyebrow.

“In twenty hours?”

“Please? You said last time that if I behaved myself for the week Mom was away –”

“Ah ah ah.” He raises a finger to stop her. “Being well-behaved means what?”

“What?” She scrunches her nose, face falling suddenly. “You mean ‘cause I yelled at Traest –”

“No,” he says quickly. “Not that. I’ll let you help out –”

“Really?”

“If,” he continues, “ _if_ you promise you won’t tell anyone to space themselves.”

She huffs again, rolls her eyes and leans back against the chair.

“Not even if they’re being gundarks?”

“Especially when they’re being gundarks.”

“But –”

“C’mon, Jay. What’s the rule?”

She groans silently and leans to the left, so that her head lolls off of the backing of the chair and into his shoulder. He feels himself grin when her voice is muffled by his shirt:

“I’m not thinking mean thoughts, Dad.”

“Well, that’s good to know. C’mon, we’ve still got a long way to go. I can teach you how to get an idiot’s array every other hand in sabaac.”

She pushes herself upright, slightly, and looks at him skeptically.

“Uncle Lando says it’s entirely luck.”

“Uncle Lando,” says Han, flicking on the auto-nav sensor and catching Jaina under the armpits, swinging her off the chair and onto the floor as he gets up, “knows nothing.”

“Really.”

“General’s honour.”

“You haven’t been a proper general in _ages_ , Dad, that’s –”

“Okay, okay, little miss know-it-all. That’s enough from you.” He pauses, lets his hand still on her shoulder. She’s growing, yes – but she still only barely comes up to his chest. “Hey. You good?”

Deep breath – he can feel her push her shoulders back; can see her stick her chin forward, just a little.

“I’m good.”

“Don’t’ worry,” he says. “One day, you’ll have so many guys runnin’ after you you won’t know how to handle it.”

She snorts, the faint stain of pink returning to her cheeks, and rolls her eyes.

“ _Dad –”_

“And then I’ll be stuck here wondering what happened to my little girl, and your Mom’ll sit there with that face ‘a hers and say ‘she’s all grown up, Han, you should’ve expected this’, and I’ll have to sulk a couple days at the docks ‘cause you won’t have any time for your old man anymore, with all your hotshot boyfriends – who you won’t be kissing ‘til you’re twenty-five, of course –”

She’s laughing in earnest now, giggles sounding muffled through the press of her sleeve to her mouth and she reaches out and pushes him in the chest in protest (“oh my Force, Dad, _no!”_ ), curled fist thumping weakly at his ribcage. He drags his hand up from her neck and musses her already-tangled hair.

“How’s this. You beat me in sabaac and I’ll bring it back down to eighteen.”

“Fifteen,” she corrects through her giggles, raising a finger at him. “You said fifteen the first time!”

Han sighs, exaggerated, and crosses his arms. “Well, alright then. Can’t go back on my word, then, can I?”

“Promise? Smuggler’s honor?”

He feels his eyebrows twitch towards his hairline; feels his back tense reflexively.

“And you’ll take that over _general’s_ honor?”

She rolls her eyes, props her hands on her hips. Her cheeks are still bright and rosy, hair an unsalvageable mess.

“Well it’s not like you’re a Jedi, Dad.”

“Aha,” says Han. “So there’s a hierarchy.”

She nods, then pauses, eyebrows dropping low and bottom lip sticking out. “Dad …”

“Yeah, kiddo.”

“If – what you said about not telling people to space themselves?”

He uncrosses his arms, fingers tapping his thigh on impulse.

“Yeah?”

Her chin lifts again, fingers tugging at her overlong sleeve. “If they’re – if people. They’re hurting – say, Mom and Jasa. Or Nik. Not me,” she adds hastily, and he closes his mouth, moves to kneel down in front of her as she continues: “if they were hurting you. I can’t just – just sit by and let ‘em hurt, Dad.”

Face to face, he can see the crease between her eyebrows. He grins, tapping under her chin with one finger. “You can’t, can you?”

“No!” Her lip is caught between her teeth, momentarily. “It’s like I’d have to be –” (A face, quick and scrunching in on itself.) “Could _you?_ ”

“Course not.”

“Well, then,” and she’s let out a breath, as though that was the signal she’d been waiting for. “It’s allowed, then.”

“What’s allowed?”

“Telling people to space ‘emselves! If –” she adds, over his sudden, unstoppable laughter, “ _if_ they’re hurting – well. _You_ know.”

“I do know,” Han says, still laughing; his daughter’s face is set stubbornly, crooked lips flat against each other and eyebrows raised accordingly, one errant bang flopping over her left eye. _Called you out, Dad_. “And that’s the only time it’s allowed.”

She opens her mouth, as if in triumph, but hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely sure,” says Han. “Totally sure. Surer than sure. And I say so,” he adds, pressing his hands against his thighs as he stands up, “so anyone tells you otherwise you’ve got backup.”

“Oh,” says Jaina. “Well that’s –that’s okay, then.” He grins, turns to head towards the lounge.

He’s pressing the hatchway open when her voice sounds again.

“Dad?”

He turns back to face her. She is twelve years old and possessing more gumption than half of the New Republic government put together, uneven locks of hair sitting in a tangled nest atop her browngold head and laughing eyes burning with a light that he swears can sometimes reach out and snare his heart ( _but then, they all three of ‘em have had a piece to call their own since the second their lungs filled with air_ ). Her jacket is overlarge and dirty and her fingers clean and thin and long and her nails chipped, badly; he knows that the second they reach the lounge she will kick off her shoes and that he’ll give her an hour before she can pick up his tricks and beat him in a round of sabacc – can picture in his mind’s eye how she’ll jump up on the seat and crow in triumph, quick-coming grin flashing gapped teeth at him, angled limbs stretching up to the ceiling in excitement.

One day, he knows, she’ll slip from his arms and find her place dancing among the stars, bright and brilliant and warm and sure, every bit her own self.

But for now –

“Thanks for making me feel better.”

He smiles (she smiles back, small and slow).

“Hey, Jaini-girl. That’s my job.”


End file.
